Preferential Voting – Single Member (AV)

SA2026 – it turns out the count ain’t over

Tuesday 21 April: To the acute embarrassment of ECSA, another story broke about “found” ballot papers. In fact the ballot papers were located a week or two ago, after the declaration of the polls but their existence only broke today. These are all absent votes, a small number taken at retirement homes in Newland, and absent votes taken on election day in Enfield polling places. This produced votes for other electorates, none of which were delivered to their home district in time to make the count. Hence ECSA’s press release being in a strange past tense with reference to the small number of ballots not having made it in to the count in other districts. The numbers involved are no more than a handful for any district and the districts involved had large margins.

Update – the votes have been counted and confirmed the victory of One Nation’s Chantelle Thomas. Here’s the text of the release by Acting Electoral Commissioner Leah McLay.

A count of Narungga ballot papers retrieved from the district of Stuart occurred at the Electoral Commission this morning.

The purpose of the count was for the Commission to determine whether the result in Narungga would have differed, had those ballots been included in the initial count and subsequent recount.

There were 81 ballot papers opened in the presence of scrutineers. Of those, 1 was rejected and 4 were deemed informal. Of the 76 votes counted in a two-party preferred count, 46 were for Chantelle Thomas, One Nation and 30 were for Tania Stock, Liberals. Had the ballot papers been included in the original count and subsequent recount, the margin in favour of Chantelle Thomas One Nation would have increased from 58 to 74.

I have therefore determined that the result in Narungga would not have differed had the ballots been included.

More info: An update on the votes. Liberal received 24 votes plus 6 preferences received for 30 votes after preferences. One Nation received 33 votes and 13 preferences for 46 after preferences. The votes were 57 Absent Early Votes and 19 Absent polling day votes.

My original commentary is now inside the post.

Read More »SA2026 – it turns out the count ain’t over

SA2026 – Finniss – Will a candidate win from fourth place?

UPDATE: As outlined inside the post, the distribution of preferences today confirmed that Finniss was won by Independent Lou Nicholson from fourth place. To steal a pun from someone responding to me on X, the result brings new meaning to “crossing the Finniss line”.

The post starts with my comments on the count before it was complete. After that I outline how the full distribution unfolded when the detail was released.
Read More »SA2026 – Finniss – Will a candidate win from fourth place?

The Coalition to face a messy by-election in Sussan Ley’s seat of Farrer

(Update: the date for the by-election has been set for 9 May.)

After losing the Liberal leadership this morning, Sussan Ley has announced she will resign as member for her southern NSW seat of Farrer. Ley has held the seat since 2001 when she took it from the National Party after the retirement of Tim Fischer.

In two-party contests, Ley has held the seat with double digit margins since her first victory in a three-cornered contest in 2001. But that margin has been reduced in contests versus Independents at two of the last three elections, to 10.9% in 2019 and only 6.2% in 2025.

If Ley resigns it will set-up a very messy by-election for new Liberal Leader Angus Taylor.

Under the Coalition agreement, the Nationals did not contest Farrer while Ley was member. With the seat vacant, it is certain that the Nationals will run against the new Liberal candidate.

Given current polling, One Nation would be certain to contest. Two of the last three contests for Farrer have seen Independents reach second place. Labor may contest the by-election, but the party has not reached a quarter of the primary vote since 2007. More likely Labor would sit out the contest and leave the field free for a conservative slugfest.

The last few weeks of Coalition disputes and Liberal leadership rumours could well drag on ahead of a Farrer by-election.
Read More »The Coalition to face a messy by-election in Sussan Ley’s seat of Farrer

The Success of Local Independents – Kooyong

A key story of the last three federal elections has been the Liberal Party’s loss of once safe heartland seats to ‘teal’ Independents.

The list is a catalogue of seats once held by Prime Ministers and senior Liberal Ministers. In NSW there’s Wentworth, North Sydney (now abolished), Warringah, Mackellar and Bradfield. In Victoria it’s Goldstein (recovered in 2025) and Kooyong, and in Western Australia, Curtin.

These electorates top lists of the most affluent in the country. They encompass some of the most desirable and expensive real estate in each state. As recently as a decade ago, it was unthinkable they could leave the Liberal fold.

There are no Queensland or South Australian seats in the above list, but two could be. The Adelaide Hills seat of Mayo, held by Rebekha Sharkie since 2016, is effectively an independent as the only member of the Centre Alliance. Ryan, Brisbane’s leafiest and once safest Liberal seat, has been held by the Greens since 2022.

As well as being Liberal Party losses, these seats have seen a dramatic decline in their Liberal two-party preferred margins based on alternative preference counts versus Labor.

Indeed, Wentworth, Warringah, Ryan and Mayo recorded Labor two-party preferred majorities by alternative counts in 2025. Had a full two-party preferred count been completed in Bradfield, this once safest of safe Liberal seats could also have turned red.

The paradox is that Labor is achieving record two-party preferred results in these seats despite the party’s primary vote collapsing. The decline in Liberal two-party preferred results in these seats says more about Liberal support in its once safe seats than it says about Labor prospects.

Support for both sides of politics has declined since the high point of two-party politics in 1975. The decline has accelerated in the last two decades. Labor’s support is down sharply from its 2007 victory under Kevin Rudd. The Coalition’s collapse is an even steeper decline from a higher starting point at the 2013 election.

The loss for Labor has been in large part matched by rising support for the Greens. Much of Labor’s fall has also been in seats it doesn’t win, such as rural seats and Coalition seats contested by high profile Independents. This causes Labor’s loss of primary vote to have less impact on the number of seats it wins.

For the Coalition, and more particularly the Liberal Party, the destination of lost primary votes is less obvious. The Liberal Party has lost some support to Labor and to several conservative minor parties. But it is the loss of support in a limited number of seats to ‘teal’ and other centrist Independents that has damaged the Liberal Party by costing it once safe seats.

In this post I’m going to look at the loss of Liberal vote to the centre, to urban Independents. To illustrate the trend, I’m going to analyse one ‘teal’ seat in depth, the inner Melbourne seat of Kooyong.
Read More »The Success of Local Independents – Kooyong

Statistics on Preference Flows between the Coalition and One Nation

This post is additional information on preference flows related to a post I published earlier today, “Liberal, National and One Nation – Friends, Enemies or Frenemies?”

With One Nation’s surge in support in recent polls, pollsters and election modelers have been looking around for information on preferences. Especially for examples of how Coalition preferences might flow when excluded in contests between Labor and One Nation.

I’ve managed to pull as much information as I can from recent Federal and Queensland elections. I hope you find it useful.Read More »Statistics on Preference Flows between the Coalition and One Nation

FED2025 – House Results in Queensland

Queensland followed the national swing to Labor at both the 2022 and 2025 elections, but only in 2025 did Labor gain seats. Despite Labor’s success, Queensland remained the only state where the Coalition (LNP in Queensland) remained as the dominant party in 2025, winning both a majority of the two-party preferred vote and a majority of the state’s seats. Queensland Labor continued to lag the party’s performance in other states.

Labor won 12 of the state’s 30 seats, its best performance since the election of the Rudd government in 2007. Labor gained seven seats, including two seats from from the Greens, and the seat of Dickson, held since 2001 by Opposition Leader Peter Dutton. As elsewhere, Labor swept the state capital, pushing the LNP out of Brisbane.

Background

It is more than three decades since Wayne Goss led Queensland Labor out of the electoral wilderness and into government. Queensland state politics has since been dominated by Labor, in government for 30 of the last 36 years.

A very different Queensland political landscape is seen through the prism of Federal results. The Coalition (LNP since 2010) has dominated the state’s federal representation. At nine of the 11 elections since John Howard’s sweeping victory in 1996, the Coalition/LNP has won 19 or more Queensland seats, more than double Labor’s representation.

Queensland is the mainland state with the highest proportion of people living distant from the urban areas surrounding the state capital. Historically Brisbane has lacked the manufacturing industry that created concentrations of Labor voters in parts of Sydney and Melbourne. It leaves Queensland Labor with less political high ground to remain above highwater in the face of Coalition floods. When electoral fortunes turn against Labor, an ebbing national political tide has looked more like a rip in Queensland.

On Labor’s defeat under Gough Whitlam in 1975, Labor was reduced to just one seat north of the Tweed, and did little better with three seats in 1977. Labor retained just two seats on the defeat of the Keating government and election of John Howard in 1996. Labor’s worst state defeats have usually coincided with periods of unpopular Federal Labor governments.

At only two elections since 1996 have Labor’s seat holdings reached double figures. The first was 2007 when Queensland backed a son of the state in Kevin Rudd and and helped make him Prime Minister. Labor won 15 of the state’s then 29 seats in 2007. The pattern of single digit seat numbers resumed in 2010, but was finally broken in 2025 with Labor winning 12 of the state’s now 30 seats.

Political thinking had long been that Labor couldn’t form national government without improving its position in Queensland. That was certainly a dominant view ahead of the 2022 federal election, a view confounded by the election of the Albanese government.

There was a significant two-party swing to Labor in Queensland at the 2022 election, but the party went backward in representation. Labor finished third in three inner-Brisbane seats, losing Griffith to the Greens and seeing the LNP seats of Brisbane and Ryan fall to the Greens rather than Labor. Labor’s national victory in 2022 was due to vastly improved results in Western Australia and continuing dominance of Victoria, trends that overcame Queensland as an obstacle to Labor forming national government. But the Albanese government’s narrow first term majority shows that Queensland is still important if Labor hopes to have a secure grip on office.

In 1987 and 1990, the re-election of the Hawke government relied on gaining seats in Queensland to compensate for losses elsewhere. Labor’s Queensland surge at both elections owed much to the final death throws of the state National Party government after three decades of non-Labor rule. Queensland results at state and federal level since suggest Queensland Labor has always been more acceptable than “Canberra” Labor. So how should we to view the 2025 result? Read More »FED2025 – House Results in Queensland

Do How-to-votes Matter? Evidence from the 2022 SA Election

Too often I hear criticism that preferential voting is corrupted by the majority of voters simply copying how-to-vote (HTV) preference recommendations. The same critics tend to decry that preference “deals” determine elections.

Talk of preference “deals” is a hangover from the now abolished Senate group voting ticket (GVT) system. In the GVT era, 90-95% of ballot papers in the Senate were single ‘1’ above the line votes with preferences determined by the party’s registered preference ticket. Preferences became a tradeable commodity with parties delivering 90-95% of preferences by arranged deals.

Those arranged “deals” never applied to lower house elections and have not applied for Senate elections since the abolition of GVTs in 2016. So-called “deals” on lower house preferences are about what parties and candidates distribute as how-to-vote recommendations. Most so-called “deals” are more expressions of shared or common interest between parties.

HTVs can have an impact, but much less than opponents of preferential voting suggest. All available research on ballot paper completion shows that the majority of voters do not copy HTV preference recommendations.

The Victorian and South Australian Electoral Commissions regularly analyse ballot papers and have determined that around 40% of major party voters complete their ballot paper with their preferred party’s HTV preference sequence. The proportion following HTVs is even lower for minor parties and independents. The difference in follow rate is largely related to the proportion of voters who receive the HTV for a particular party or candidate. Obviously the probability of a voter copying a HTV recommendation is higher if they receive a HTV than if they don’t.

Most countries ban campaigning at polling places, but Australia permits campaigning and the distribution of how-to-vote material, if done politely.

Several years ago I wrote a long post on why candidates and parties distribute how-to-votes. Overwhelmingly the point of HTVs is to influence first preferences and to encourage the casting of formal votes. For minor parties being able to influence preferences may also be important, but the follow rate for minor party HTVs is low if they do not actively campaign.

The weakness in trying to assess the impact of HTVs is that not every voter receives their preferred party or candidate’s HTV. If we knew who received a how-to-vote, and how they completed their ballot paper, we would have a better measure of HTV influence. But the secrecy of the ballot makes it impossible to link a ballot paper to a voter.

Instead we are stuck with follow rates based on all ballot papers. But do we get a better measure of HTV influence if we are confident that most voters saw all candidate’s HTVs.

There is one Australian jurisdiction where we know that many more voters see HTV recommendations.

That is South Australia where there is a unique provision that allows HTVs for all candidates in a district to be displayed in front of a voter in a voting booth.

Let me explain the South Australian system and then go on to compare preference flow data from the 2022 South Australian election with the HTVs displayed in voting booths.

For those who want the data behind this post, you can find the full data by district, and summary tables by party, at the following link.

The preferences document is part of a longer publication I’ve prepared on the results of the 2022 South Australian election. You can find it here or read about it here in a post about the publication yesterday.

You can find my 2022 South Australian Election results publication at this link.

I also published a similar analysis of 2018 South Australian preference flows and HTVs at this link.

Read More »Do How-to-votes Matter? Evidence from the 2022 SA Election

FED2025 – House Results in Victoria

I felt a certain sense of deja vu ahead of the 2025 election when it appeared the fate of the Albanese government could swing on the unpopularity of a Victorian state Labor government.

At the first Federal election I covered in March 1990, Victoria was Labor’s weak state. It was still eight months until Paul Keating uttered his ‘recession we had to have’ line, but already in March the economic failings of the Victorian Labor government had tipped the state’s economy into recession.

In March 1990 the full scale of the Victorian government’s financial disasters were still months from being known, but the souring electoral mood was to cost the Hawke government ten seats south of the Murray. It took gains elsewhere for Labor to win a narrow re-election.

The narrative ahead of the 2025 election had similarities. As I wrote in my election preview, “The question for 2025 is whether the Albanese government can distance itself from the state Labor government, or whether the Liberal Party can successfully tie the two together. Peter Dutton will also need to rally the factionalised and dispirited Victorian branch of the Liberal Party, not an easy task for a Queenslander.”

Yet it was in Victoria that Labor had gained an extra seat at the April 2023 Aston by-election. It was in Victoria that Labor retained the marginal Labor seat of Dunkley at a March 2024 by-election. At both by-elections, Peter Dutton was perceived as a negative for the Liberal Party with Victorian voters, compounded by on-going fratricide within the Liberal Party’s state branch.

Federal Labor’s wariness of its state brethren could be gauged by the scarcity of joint campaign events featuring Anthony Albanese and Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan. It contrasted with high rotation appearances with Labor Premiers Roger Cook (WA), Peter Malinauskas (SA) and Chris Minns (NSW).

But as elsewhere in Australia, election night shredded pre-election perceptions. Labor increased its Victorian vote and number of seats held. Labor’s Victorian two-party preferred vote was higher than in NSW, Queensland and Western Australia. Victoria joined Western Australia at the low end of swings to Labor, but both both states started from a high Labor vote in 2022.Read More »FED2025 – House Results in Victoria

Greens Preferences Flow to Labor – 2010 and 2025 Compared

Over the past three decades, the Australian Greens have grown from a collection of state-based parties overshadowed by the centrist Australian Democrats, to being the largest of Australia’s minor parties.

Once minor parties were viewed as bit-players in Australian politics, mere preference conduits for the major parties. Today the Greens are important in their own right electorally, and through elected representation play an important role in Australian Parliaments.

Greens support is now high enough to guarantee the election of a Senator from each state at half-Senate elections. Were it not for party defections, the Greens would have a permanent team of 12 Senators in the 76 seat Senate.

As was highlighted by winning four House seats at the 2022 Federal election, the Greens are now competitive in up to a dozen House seats. Despite being reduced to one House seat in 2025, the Greens remain competitive with Labor and the Coalition.

The Greens won their first general election seat in 2010 on Liberal preferences, and would have won more seats since were it not for the Coalition’s decision since 2013 to put Labor candidates ahead of the Greens on how-to-vote preference recommendations.

In this post I’m comparing two elections 15 years apart, 2010 and 2025, and examining how support for the Greens and the party’s preference flows have changed.

The 2010 election was the first where the Greens passed 10% of the vote. Led by Bob Brown, the Greens were still seen largely as an environment party, and Brown helped Labor and Julia Gillard form government after the election. Adam Bandt won the electorate of Melbourne in 2010, coming from behind to win after receiving three-quarters of Liberal preferences.

As Greens leader at the 2025 election, Adam Bandt lost his seat at an election where the Greens vote was roughly the same as in 2010. But 15 years had seen the development of differences in the geographic pattern of Greens support, and an increase in preference flows to Labor.
Read More »Greens Preferences Flow to Labor – 2010 and 2025 Compared

FED2025 – Western Australia House Results

In 2022 it was the huge swing to Labor in Western Australia that delivered majority status to the Albanese government.

In 2025 the WA result was less dramatic, more a case of Labor’s position firming as the rest of the nation caught up with the west’s trend.

WA’s 2022 swing to Labor was a whopping 10.5% compared to 2.9% east of the border. Western Australia produced the smallest state swing to Labor in 2025, just 0.9%, but against a larger 3.3% swing in the rest of the nation.

Over two elections since 2019, the two-party preferred swing to Labor in Western Australia has been 11.4% against 6.2% in the rest of Australia. In six years Western Australia has gone from being a bulwark for the Coalition to being a bastion for Labor at both state and federal elections.Read More »FED2025 – Western Australia House Results